Military promises death probe overhaul after family complaints

Families have been waiting years for military investigations to yield findings on soldiers’ deaths.

Department of National Defence ombudsman Pierre Daigle waits to appear at a Commons Veterans affairs committee on Parliament Hill in Ottawa on Tuesday, November 30, 2010.

By:Allan WoodsOttawa Bureau, Published on Thu Dec 02 2010

OTTAWA—Cpl. Stephen Gibson was on his first day of work as a military police officer, marshalling a Terry Fox run near CFB Suffield in Alberta, when his slow-moving, unmarked car was pummelled by a tractor trailer.

It was Sept. 23, 2003, when the 29-year-old was killed. More than seven years later, his parents, Jane and Paul, have yet to see the 1,300-page report of a Canadian Forces probe into his death that was completed in 2005.

“We would like to know the details, but also . . . that the military admit its culpability,” Paul Gibson said.

The Gibson family is one of six families who came forward Thursday to denounce the military for shutting down their search for answers, one they say will help them finally put their loved ones to rest.

Those six represent untold others who have decided to fight the same battle away from the glare of the media, said Pierre Daigle, the Canadian Forces ombudsman.

“Others are suffering the same treatment but do not want to come forward,” he said. “They do not want to relive what they went through. It’s too painful.”

He said his decision to go public follows a long battle to secure better treatment for the families of dead soldiers, one with repeated promises from the government and military and repeated disappointments.

The details of the five deaths the military has been refusing to release range from the tragic to the all-too-common.

There’s the mother of a corporal who hanged himself on a military base in March 2008 following a battle with post-traumatic stress, drugs and alcohol linked to his tour in Afghanistan; two wives whose husbands died of heart attacks in 2006 and 2008; the father of an officer cadet who went missing and was found three weeks later floating in a Kingston-area river; and the family of a 22-year-old bombardier who was found dead in Afghanistan in 2008 while waiting to be sent home to Canada because of an ankle injury.

All are in the dark about the full details of their family member’s death, which has extended and compounded their grief.

“All we ask is when a family has suffered the loss of a loved one, all we want is that we give to that family as much information as possible, as soon as possible on an ongoing basis,” Daigle said. “On top of that, this doesn’t cost much.”

The constant refrain of Canadian defence ministers and senior military officials as the casualty count has risen over 10 years in Afghanistan is that support for the soldiers’ families is as important as the support they give to the soldiers themselves.

But that promise rings hollow when measured against the defence department’s actions when soldiers are killed in the service of their country.

“When they told us that the family is their priority, I’m worried about what is the priority Number 2 if this is a priority that has been going on for so long,” Daigle said.

In some cases the delays are the result of bureaucratic wrangling over issues that could determine pension and death benefits, alter military policies and assign legal responsibility.

But the military says it is taking steps to streamline the investigations, known as a Board of Inquiry.

“We’re taking too long to do these things. We’re looking at how we change some of the terms of reference to shorten up the process to make it easier to get to the core issues,” said Vice-Admiral Bruce Donaldson, the vice-chief of defence staff.

He said the military needs to do a better job of keeping families better informed of the findings as the process sputters along. To do that, he said they are appointing military chaplains to support the families of dead soldiers, assigning someone to track the investigations where families are waiting for details of a death, and cutting the number of levels of review for the findings of the reports.

“I think you’ll see concrete results out of this,” Donaldson said.

On Thursday, Defence Minister Peter MacKay said he had asked Col. Gerry Blais, the military’s head of casualty support management, to make contact with the six families mentioned by the ombudsman and address their concerns.

But he reiterated that “investigations take time” and it was not his place to rush them along.

In the seven-year odyssey Cpl. Gibson’s family has endured, the initial release of information was complicated by “ongoing litigation,” according to an August letter that Mackay sent to the ombudsman.

But the road blocks they have encountered only deepened their anger. The soldier’s parents, who live in Ottawa, were the executors of his will, but when they sought a copy of the police report into the deadly traffic accident, it was denied to them by the Royal Canadian Mounted Police on the grounds that it would invade their dead son’s privacy.

“We couldn’t have access to the report until 20 years hence,” said Paul Gibson. “We’d be in our nineties by then, if we’re still alive.”

Sheila Fynes, whose son, Cpl. Stuart Langridge, killed himself in his barracks at CFB Edmonton was compelled to hold a news conference in October to air two years’ worth of grievances.

Langridge was on suicide watch at the time of his death, having tried on six previous occasions to take his life, and his mother says he received substandard treatment for his emotional and substance abuse problems.

Upon his death, the military refused to recognize his family as the next-of-kin and instead presented the Canadian flag that draped his coffin to a former girlfriend.

On top of all that, the military failed to tell his family about the suicide note the troubled corporal wrote before his death, saying that he hanged himself “to stop the pain.” They only learned about it 14 months after his death.

Following her public complaints, Gen. Walter Natynczyk, the chief of defence staff, called and she met with MacKay. Both expressed their regret over the military’s handling of the matter.

Fynes told the Star later that she was confident her complaints would finally be addressed. But she has seen no concrete steps yet to resolve the problems, Daigle said. His office made sure of that before going public with the disputes.

“She’s still not satisfied with her case,” he said.

With files from Tonda MacCharles

More on thestar.com

We value respectful and thoughtful discussion. Readers are encouraged to flag comments that fail to meet the standards outlined in our
Community Code of Conduct.
For further information, including our legal guidelines, please see our full website
Terms and Conditions.